In honor of Tu Bishevat, 1st grade has spiraled our learning back to thinking about composting again. AT the beginning of the year, we learned the foundations- what is composting? Why do we do it? How do we do it? And of course, we learned about the worms and their poop- because how can we know about composting if we don’t know about worm poop (If your child didn’t say this part to you 100x, consider yourself one of the lucky ones).

 

But now, we are taking this learning a step up. Now that we have been composting for a while, we wanted to know how we are doing! How did we do that you ask? The kids sorted through garbage- yes, it was gross and messy.

 

We took a garbage back from both Lower School and Upper school lunch. One at time, we weighed the garbage back, dumped it out on tarp, sorted through it, putting garbage back into the garbage and compo stable items into the compost bin. Then we reweighed the bag after. From this math, we were able to find out how much composting we Weren’t doing that we could!  Our research taught us that we aren’t composting about half of what we could be. We hope to continue this research once a month to help MJDS do better with composting, in turn, helping save our world!

 

HAPPY TU BiSHEVAT!

So much fun spending our learning time thinking about, wondering about, looking at and exploring the world of TREES. The students spent time creating trees out of as many materials as possible: blocks, legos, unifix cubes, paper, paint, buttons, etc… We used a lot of our Hebrew color vocab words to help us describe the trees in Hebrew. We also did some color sorting to help us review our colors in Hebrew.

 

We practiced singing this Tu Bishevat Song:

*I’m having a specific issue on my blog page. I have schedule my weekly blog to go out at 3PM Fridays, right after I write them. However, as you notice, it’s going out at 12:00AM instead, which means you are actually receiving the blog at a weird time, but also almost a full week late. We are working on this, but just know that we are aware. Meanwhile, you can always check the blog at your own convenience, and then you don’t have to worry about crazy emails at 12:00 AM.

 

In addition, some parents are having an issue posting comments to their child’s blog. It seems the captcha box is not appearing on the page, so they are unable to post their comments.

We are trying to replicate the issue so we can fix it, but are having trouble, so we need the help of those having trouble.

If you experience this issue, please provide for the following information and pass it along to your child’s teacher ASAP:

1) Blog link to the page where you are attempting to post a comment

2) The type of device you are using (iPhone, Galaxy, Chromebook, MacBook, Dell, etc.)

3) What browser you are using (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc.)

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In conjunction with building the 2nd grade curriculum, I have been defining specific essential questions to guide our learning. One of the essential we are working to guide our learning of Holidays is the following: How can celebrating Jewish holidays strengthen my Jewish identity, while also helping me engage with the world today?

 

In order to measure if learning about Jewish Holidays truly strengthens our students’ Jewish Identities, we need to talk about it. What is a Jewish identity? What do we do that strengthens it?

Here is a summary of our discussion this morning (all ideas and words from the kids; I was super impressed):

Our Jewish Identity is what being Jewish means to us.

Ways that we strengthen our Jewish Identity :

Going to Temple/Synagogue

Learning Hebrew

Celebrating Shabbat and other Jewish Holidays

Giving Tzedakah

Going to MJDS

Going to Israel, going to the Kotel

Tefillah

HW QUESTION: FAMILY DISCUSSION (please have your child answer these questions in the comment section)

What does your family already do to help strengthen your Jewish identities?

**CHALLENGE(optional): As a family, take on something new to help strengthen your Jewish identities. Share with us what it is (examples:  Lighting Shabbat Candles, learning the Parsha together, Singing a Jewish song or prayer at night…)

Fun game we’ve been playing to get our our wiggles while learning Hebrew. I saw an action, the kids do it

לקום- lakum- get up

לשבת- lashevet- sit

לרוץ- larutz- run

ללכת לאט-lalechet le’at- walk slowly

לעצור- la’atzor-to stop

 

The second graders spent this week wondering about trees, writing questions that they would like to research, reading through books and website about trees all in an effort to choose research topics! Here are the topics your child chose:

Hudson and Sam- Oak Trees

Maddy- Coconut Trees

Shiri and Yael- Trees that grow in Israel

Harper and Jacob- Pollination

Hazel and Alex- Willow Trees

Kenzie- Blossom Trees

We are looking forward to doing our research and creation presentation so of our research in the next couple of weeks, in honor of the upcoming holiday of Tu Bishevat. We are hoping to showcase our work at the community wide Tu BiShevat celebration on 1/27 at the Audubon Center.

The seniors (and a few Juniors) used their choice time this week to create murals of our winter vocab words from last week, Rain and Snow, Geshem and Sheleg, שלג וגשם.

It has been so much fun getting back into Colors with the little ones. We focused on the following three colors this week:

Red- Adom-אדום

Blue-Kachol-כחול

Green- Yarok- ירוק

We made craft sticks covered in materials for each color, which will eventually become a craft stick rainbow when we finish learning all of the colors.

We also went to the gym today be play color tag! Ask your child about it.

 

Finally, we read the beautiful story by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso “Cain and Abel”. It’s a beautiful story about heavy and scary emotions, portrayed by the relationship between Brothers in the Torah- the first brother’s ever. It describes anger as a burning in the heart and feeling red, and uses throwing a stone as a metaphor for war and violence. But it concludes with the idea that when we don’t throw those stones, we are saving someone’s world. When we don’t use violence- we can save the whole world. Peace.

Also, enjoy this Gem- Juniors lighting candles at Shabbat Sing.

Shevat is here and Tu BiShevat, the new year for the trees, is coming!

Please do this homework by next week Monday, January 7th.

Help create excitement about our upcoming research projects about trees that grow in Israel.

We’re playing “Did ya know?”

Please use the following websites to read about trees. Find a new fact that you never knew about a tree before.  Post this idea in that comment section here. Begin your sentence with “Did ya know…”.

Example: Did you know that Methuselah, an estimated 4,765-year-old ancient Bristlecone Pine, is one of the oldest living trees in the world.

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/plants/trees.html

https://www.kidzone.ws/plants/trees.htm

https://study.com/academy/lesson/tree-facts-lesson-for-kids.html

Have fun!

Here is our video of the week to begin our learning about WINTER – CHOREF- חורף